california never felt like home to me
by kathillards
Summary: "I'll come back for you," he promises, just like he does every time he leaves, and then he gets on his bike and she's left watching him vanish into the horizon, just like she does every time he leaves. —- NickMadison


**notes:** i loved the quote i used for my jason/kat fic so much, i just had to set it to some of my other favorite ships. words belong to elisabeth hewer.

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 **california never felt like home to me**

 _and california never felt like home to me_  
 _until i had you on the open road_

— halsey, drive

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 _one universe has us right, of all the millions stacked on millions._

-:-

So, it goes like this: it's the holidays and he's happy and he's home and there are lights around the music store and lights in her smile and he's happy.

It's Christmas Eve and there's a menorah on the counter because Vida insisted and a tree adorned with gold and silver and ornaments filling up one corner and Chip running around in a cape pretending to be a superhero. Xander is throwing candy at people and Vida is threatening to hit him and Madison is laughing, saying, "Chip, but you _are_ a superhero," and he's _happy_.

Toby says, "Everyone make awish," and Leelee says, "That's not how Christmas works," and Phineas says, "I wish Fireheart would stop burning my socks," and everyone laughs, and he's happy.

He can't remember the last time he was so happy.

"Hey," Madison says in the middle of the chaos and the dancing and Fireheart being persuaded not to burn down the Christmas tree by his parents, "How's your first Christmas back?"

He doesn't know what to say, doesn't know how to express that this is the best Christmas he's ever had and a million miles ahead of every Christmas growing up when all he'd written Santa was _I just want to know why my parents left me_ and never gotten an answer. She smiles like she knows and hands him his present in a blue square box.

Inside is his baby blanket, as bright red as ever, smelling more distinctly of lemon and waterlilies, fresh and cleaned and wrapped in her smiles and her scent and her. He looks up at her, says, "I'm glad I'm home for Christmas," unable to stop the way his heart skips a beat when she beams at him.

"Everyone really missed you," she tells him, the words quiet like a secret. Her fingers tap-tap-tap along the silver bracelet on her wrist, twisting the blue mermaid charm hanging off it, a nervous habit she's never managed to break.

"And you?" he can't help but ask, grinning the way he had when she'd come up to him outside underneath the tree his last night in town before he left and asked him to come back for her.

"Nah," she says, ducking her head so he can't see her smile, but he does anyway, because he's long since got her smile memorized. "I knew you were coming back."

"Yeah?" he laughs, leaning over until it feels like the room has shrunk to just the two of them, her eyes bright and dancing, his breath ghosting over her cheeks. "How?"

Madison shrugs. "You're you," she says, like it's simple, and opens her palm to offer him a sprig of mistletoe. "And I'm me."

He takes her hand with the mistletoe on it and closes the gap between them, kissing her until he feels dizzy. His heart is pounding, and he can feel hers against his chest as he presses close to her, pulling her in so that every inch of their bodies are touching, no space left for air.

Behind them, everyone is cheering, and she giggles into the kiss, and he's happy. Outside, the fairy lights on the trees sparkle into the night sky.

-:-

 _so it's not this one. i can live with that._

-:-

He leaves her on a Tuesday morning, windy and cold with the bite of winter creeping up on them, her breath coming out in wisps of fog as she stands outside under their tree and watches him get ready to go.

"Don't miss me too much," he says, half-joking, but the words hit her in the heart like a machete anyways. His grin fades when he finally glances up from his bike to catch the look on her face.

"It just feels like you're always leaving," she murmurs, wrapping her blue coat around herself as a gust of new, colder winds rushes past. "I don't want to make you stay, but..." Her voice trails off, lost in the breeze.

"Hey," he says, reaching out and touching her cheek with two fingers. His hand is warm; it always is. She can practically feel the fire always simmering beneath the surface. "It's just something I have to do, you know? And you have college, and Vida has a production deal, and everyone is doing things – "

"You could do things, too," she insists, lifting a hand to clasp over his wrist, holding it in place. "You could come to college with me. Run the shop with Toby. Xander and Chip are doing amazing things in the magical world, and you – you're the Light. You could do anything."

"Maddie, you know none of that is for me," he says, sliding his other hand up her arm. "I just have to figure some things out, all right? I'll come back. I always do."

And it's true. He always does, no matter what his reasons are for leaving – his foster dad had a stroke; his sister is getting married; he got called away on a red ranger mission; he wants to see this landmark on the other side of the country. He never takes her, because she doesn't ask, and they both know her life is here, her roots have settled in Briarwood. If she's a tree, he's a bird. But he comes back.

"I know," she sighs, letting her hand fall. He doesn't pull away for a moment. "I'll miss you."

Nick presses a kiss to her temple, warm and soft and fleeting. "I'll come back for you," he promises, just like he does every time he leaves, and then he gets on his bike and she's left watching him vanish into the horizon, just like she does every time he leaves.

-:-

 _the world is full of wonders and a hundred years ago the moon was too much to dream of touching._

-:-

This time, when he comes back, she's not at the store like she usually is. He heads to the forest, his heart in his throat, and finds her making water dance for two little fairy girls by the river snaking across the heart of their home. She looks radiant in the summer sunlight, her dress and her magic as deep a blue as the sky.

He doesn't interrupt. He wouldn't know what to say, anyway. He sits down against a tree and watches her spin around in the water, laughing. She's cut her hair shorter, but she's as beautiful as he remembers. When she catches his eye, she doesn't come over to him at first.

It hurts more than he expected it to.

Instead, she kneels down and says something to the fairy girls that makes them brighten even more and run away quickly, holding hands and giggling. It's only when they're gone that she stops her spell and the water splashes down around her, leaving her dry as she approaches him.

"Hey," he says, getting to his feet. His mouth feels dry. She slides her morpher into her jacket pocket and tucks her hair behind her ears – another nervous gesture, he hasn't forgotten. "How are you?"

"I'm good," she says, her gaze sliding away from his for a heartbeat of a moment. "I didn't know you were coming back today."

"Me, neither," he admits with a laugh, reaching up to rub the back of his neck. Maddie's not the only one with nervous gestures. "I missed you. It was kind of a spur of the moment decision."

Her face softens a little, like she wants to smile, but doesn't. "Well, you picked a good time," she tells him. "I could use some help with these kids."

Before he can ask her what she means, the two fairies come back, only this time, they have a whole gaggle of fairy children behind them, all excitedly chattering away – partly in English, partly in fairy language – as they look up at him and Madison.

"Tell me we're not doing a performance," he sighs.

Madison smiles at him. "We're doing a performance."

She had never been one to lie to him. Semi-reluctantly, he takes out his own morpher and lets her take the lead. Apparently, they're doing a fire-and-water puppets version of an old folk tale from the forest.

He's never heard of it, but she guides him through the motions – a sorcerer boy from the village fell in love with a mermaid and almost drowned to be with her. The legendary warriors gave him the gift of breathing underwater when he completed a quest for them, but when he went down to find her, he learned she'd come up to the surface to be with him, and dried up and died.

The sorcerer boy never used his magical gift for the rest of his life, dying alone in the woods without ever touching the sea again.

"That's not a happy story," he murmurs to her when they finish, watching the fairy children applause excitedly in mild alarm. "Why did we tell that one?"

Madison shrugs. "Most fairytales aren't happy. Love stories are even less happy. Besides, they're here for the magic, not the story."

He eyes her thoughtfully, but she doesn't give him a chance to react, clapping her hands to get their attention before she can send them on their merry way. He catches her arm before she can leave, too, and she turns over her shoulder to look at him, her smile soft and wistful.

"You don't think we have a happy love story?" he challenges, his heart flipping over in anticipation of her response. If she says no, or worse, if she says, _We could have, but you ruined it_ , or _I'm with someone else now_ , he doesn't know if he'll be able to handle it.

She doesn't say any of that. She doesn't say anything for a moment that stretches long enough to make him shift his weight, nervous and uncomfortable. Then she pushes herself up on her tip-toes, sliding her hands up to his shoulders for balance. His hands come around her waist automatically, steadying her, and he's almost forgotten what she smells like, but the scent of waterlilies and lemon blossoms washes over him like a mist.

"I think we could be," she admits, her eyes searching his for – something, he's not sure what. He hopes she finds it there, whatever it is. Her lips are awfully close to his. "If we really tried."

Her eyes flutter shut as he angles his head down, ready to kiss her, ready to _try_ –

The voices of their friends interrupt them, making him jump away in surprise, putting enough space between their bodies that even Xander doesn't make a joke about interrupting them before the three of them descend on him with welcome back hugs.

He catches Madison's eye over Chip's shoulder and she's smiling, arms folded, watching him with his friends in his home. She looks radiant, still, even without water swirling around her, like a miracle, if boys like him were allowed any more miracles than he'd already been given.

Her smile is one of possibility, and if he spends too long thinking of those possibilities that day, well, it's only because he doesn't want to end up like the sorcerer who fell in love with a mermaid. Life is too much better now to go back to the way things used to be.

-:-

 _look how far we've come. turn over your shoulder and just look._

-:-

"So, where'd you go this time?" she asks him under the blue lights and quiet chatter of a little half-magical, half-human café at the edge of the forest and the city. He hands her a cup of coffee, her favorite caramel frappuccino, and sits down with his own glass of iced mocha latte. She's impressed he still remembers her order, and he grins at her as he sits down.

"You really wanna know?" Nick asks, teasing, and pulls something out of his pocket and spins it across the table to her. "I accidentally ended up there.

She looks down. It's a magnet of the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, with the words 'Greetings From Angel Grove' beneath them in rubber. She picks it up and turns around between her fingers, running her thumb over the blue ranger.

"Accidentally?" she questions, raising an eyebrow at him as she gives him the magnet back. He chuckles and leans back in the booth, tossing the magnet up in the air and catching it.

"Maybe my subconscious was calling me there," he amends, making her laugh as she takes a sip of her drink. "Did you know it's been fifteen years since the power rangers first showed up in Angel Grove?"

"Is that why you were there?" she asks. "For Power Rangers Day?"

Nick laughs, looking down into his drink. "Not quite. I ran into some of the original rangers, the ones who still live there. I guess they knew who I was already. That was actually… the day I decided to come back to Briarwood."

She leans forward, curious. "What did they say?" she asks instead of _which ones_ because the question popped into her mind first. What could the original rangers have possibly said to make him come back home that same day?

He drums his fingers on the table, seeming suddenly nervous. "A lot of stuff. You know they're, like, normal people? With jobs and stuff? They run dojos and dance studios and some of them are ambassadors for the United Nations."

She blinks. "Impressive," she admits. "What did they say to get you to leave?"

Nick smiles quickly, probably at her bluntness. "Jason – he was red, the first red – said that – that I shouldn't leave my team for too long, or things will start to change. Sometimes good change, sometimes bad change. He said that he left twice and he said to tell my friends that I love them before they leave and he said he forgot to do that, once, and things changed."

The look in his eyes is suddenly very intense. The café is filled with people, but it feels like they're the only two in there. She swallows hard and asks, "Bad changes?"

He shrugs, looking down again. "Vida's producing records for superstars. Xander – he's still out being a hero. Chip is a full-fledged knight now. You – you're in college, you're going to do amazing things. Good changes."

She reaches over, takes his hand. "You know there's room for you in all of that." He doesn't say anything, so she switches tracks. "What happened to Jason's team?"

"They went on to do amazing things," he tells her. She squeezes his hand and he smiles at her. "He told me to come back. He said that if I didn't tell you how I felt now, I might miss my chance."

She frowns. "I know how you feel." And she does, and she hasn't doubted it, not once, not even after all the times he left her, not since the day he drove his motorcycle through the forest to save them all the very first day they met. She _knows_ him – has always known him.

Nick leans over and says, quietly, earnestly, for the first time, "I love you, Maddie."

 _Oh_. That's what Jason means by _good changes_.

-:-

 _maybe we'll come across each other at the turning of the century, racing across the breaches between worlds._

-:-

So, it goes like this: it's summer and he's happy and he's about to leave his home and the sun is shining in her smile and over Briarwood and he's _happy_.

"One week," she tells him firmly as he adjusts the blue helmet over her head. "School starts back on Monday, and I can't miss class."

He chuckles, stepping back to put on his own helmet. "Of course you can't," he says fondly, and she hits him with a laugh. "One week. I promise." He pauses as she settles onto the bike his mother had given her. "Are you sure you're ready?"

She revs up the engine and shoots him a smile. "I am."

"When you graduate," he says, getting on his motorcycle, "I'm taking you everywhere."

Madison grins at him. "I can't wait," she says, and then she presses on the gas pedal, and they drive off into the horizon together, Briarwood fading into the sunlight behind them, and the whole world unfurling in front of them.

-:-

 _i'll build my life on that maybe_

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